L&D conference season perennial favourites
"All too often, managers surround themselves with people whose life experiences mirror their own. Over time, the gene pool becomes a stagnant pond. Year after year, it's the same people having the same conversations about the same issues, often in the same beige conference rooms. That has to change."
Michele Zanini
The economic model of large scale L&D conferences relies on perpetuating old mantras.
The familiar themes don't change as the formula is always the same:
1. Position outputs as inputs (Example: 'We need a new approach to learning...')
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2. Position new technologies as a shortcut
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3. Distract people from systems change.
Some typical conference hall tropes that can't change in the present system:
(Tick them off in the conference programme...)
'Moving to a performance focus'
'Creating business value'
'Creating more 'pull' for our 'learning products'
'Aligning learning to the business'
'Building a learning culture'
'Marketing for L&D'
'Measuring the ROI of learning'
'Creating content that people will love'
'Becoming more learner centric'
'Moving to skills based learning'
'L&D has to change .....'.
Topically, you aren’t wrong. These titles or themes are found all across the spectrum of L&D events. But these are merely the content sessions, the objects that fuel the social experience. Within each are certainly nuggets of wisdom, insights, new skills and practical ideas that each individual takes into the hallways, the lunches, the dinners, the evening events to fuel their connections, to build context which will point them in new and exciting directions.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading and commenting Mark, it’s much appreciated. I agree that the value is often created despite and beyond the status quo formula I’m highlighting here. (Which speaks volumes).
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